Brown talks tough, woos mainstream

Prime Minister Gordon Brown reached out to Britain's "mainstream majority" on Tuesday, promising to clean up politics and get tough on crime to try to prevent a crushing election defeat next year. His speech sought to win back disaffected middle class voters who turned to Labour under Tony Blair, the former prime minister who led Labour to three election wins before stepping aside in 2007.
Brown said Labour had been right to pump billions of pounds into the economy to combat the recession and said he would make a legally binding commitment to cut the record budget deficit in half over the next four years. Brown stressed the virtues of "fairness and responsibility" and said the government would get tough on the bonus culture at banks that so many blame for the financial crisis.
"Call them middle-class values, call them traditional working class values, call them family values, call them all of these; these are the values of the mainstream majority," he said. In what is likely to be seen as an opening to the Liberal Democrats who could hold the balance of power in the next election if there is a hung parliament, Brown said Labour would offer a referendum commitment to a vote on amending Britain's first-past-the-post voting system early in the next parliament.
Brown also said voters would be able to oust MPs found to have broken rules on corruption. Support for the 58-year-old Scot has melted away in the last year when Brown has been hurt by a scandal over politicians' expenses, rising unemployment and a perception that he is a ditherer. The latest opinion poll put Labour down in third place for the first time since 1982, pollster Ipsos Mori said.
The survey put the Conservatives on 36 percent, the Liberal Democrats on 25 percent and Labour on 24 percent. Addressing Labour at its annual conference in Brighton on Tuesday, Brown argued his decisions have taken the sting out of the worst recession in decades and put Britain on track to economic recovery.
He tried to assuage voter anger over the expenses scandal that damaged all of Britain's main political parties and countered opposition charges that society is falling apart, with measures to tackle youth crime and binge drinking. "We will never allow teenage tearaways or anybody else to turn our town centres into no-go areas at night times." Political analysts say the result of the election, which must be called by June 2010, is not a foregone conclusion, pointing to several outcomes ranging from a big Conservative win to the outside chance of a small Labour majority.